


Medium

by JinjoJess



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Dangan Ronpa: Kirigiri, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, POV Alternating, does the character death warning count when it's a canon death?, mostly anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 16:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19232581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinjoJess/pseuds/JinjoJess
Summary: Kirigiri asks a favor of Komaru.





	Medium

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Pride Month, everyone! I wanted to write something new, but sadly I've been too worn out for it lately. Instead, have one of my more popular fics from my Tumblr that showcases some of the great f/f relationships in DR. I've also sprinkled in some references to DRK for anyone who's read the first couple books.

“I am told,” Kirigiri said, sliding into the chair across from Komaru, “that you can commune with the dead.”

“Um, I’ve only done it once or twice.”

Komaru had never been alone with Kirigiri before. Her brother had assured her that Kirigiri was a dependable and caring friend, and even Fukawa had admitted that she “wasn’t half bad,” at least not compared to the other non-Togami bozos in her social circle. Still, Komaru had been trying to avoid Kirigiri since her arrival at the 14th Branch headquarters a few days ago. She couldn’t explain why, really. Kirigiri just had a chilly intensity about her that put Komaru on edge. The day they’d been introduced, she’d felt trapped—one hand gripped by the cool leather of a glove, she’d been unable to look away from her face. It was as if Kirigiri’s gaze could pin Komaru like a beetle to cork-board.

She’d been so skillful at not being caught alone so far, always glued to Fukawa, or her brother, or to Asahina (who had taken a particular interest in babying Komaru that she didn’t want to think too deeply about), only to let her guard down at a critical moment. Fukawa’s induction ceremony was a the end of the week; it shouldn’t have been that hard to pull off. Now here she was, frozen to a table in the cafeteria on Day Five, without any backup.

The Warriors would have some choice words for her when she got back to Touwa City.

“I see.” Kirigiri laced her fingers. She didn’t avert her eyes. Komaru began to wonder if she’d even blinked since she sat down.

“The first time it was a living ghost,” Komaru said, following several tense seconds during which she realized no further response was coming. She began to peel the label off her bottle of tea. “So really, it was just that one time with Touwa-kaicho…”

“Please, elaborate.”

“I’m sure Touko-chan could do a better job-”

“Fukawa-san is a storyteller by trade. I’m not interested in narrative—I want facts.”

“Uh… I’m not sure I get what you mean.” Of all the topics Komaru had worried would be broached during this visit—the most dreaded of which, of course, being her brother asking what exactly her relationship was to Fukawa—discussing her abilities as a spirit conduit had not been one of them. Especially not with Kirigiri. Was this some kind of joke? Was Kirigiri even capable of joking? “Do you really believe in this kind of stuff?”

“You would be surprised what I’m willing to believe.” Kirigiri closed her eyes for a moment. If Komaru hadn’t known better, she might have interpreted the twitch in the corner of Kirigiri’s lips as a faint, almost nostalgic smile.

Her eyes snapped back open, and Komaru once again felt the continental pin slip between her ribs.

“What I want to know is if there are conditions that need to be met.”

“Conditions…” Komaru tapped her chin, reconstructing the Touwa Hills elevator area in her mind. It was not a memory she liked to keep readily on hand. “Well, at the time, we had Kaicho-san’s head in a paper bag, but other than that…”

“A corpse is necessary, then?” Kirigiri’s brow knit into a frown. Her expression was neither incredulous nor angry, as Komaru expected, but rather—disappointed. Maybe even a touch sad.

“I don’t know that we need actual remains,” Komaru said, wanting the melancholy look off Kirigiri’s face as soon as possible. It didn’t fit. She shrugged and tried to keep her voice light. “We probably just need something the person left behind.”

“Left behind,” Kirigiri repeated. She’d reached up to brush her braid behind her ear, and was now lightly drawing her finger over the black ribbon tied there. Her expression had thankfully slipped into thoughtful.

“Yeah, it could be anything, really.”

“ _Anything_  will work?”

“Well, uh. Anything has the potential to work!” Komaru released a nervous chuckle and smiled so widely she had to shut her eyes. “Guess we’ll just have to try it and hope for the best.”

“If that’s the case,” Kirigiri said, beginning to remove her gloves, “here.”

Underneath the black leather, Kirigiri’s hands were a mass of dark, scorched tissue. In a different context, the intricate, twirling patterns might have been beautiful, but knowing that they’d once been flesh caused Komaru to swallow hard and curl her own fingers in protectively. Her brother had mentioned Kirigiri’s burns before, but had been frustratingly evasive regarding them. When she’d gone to Fukawa instead, she’d received a similarly vague response. “Don’t ask people about their scars, Komaru,” Fukawa had said, tapping a finger on her left thigh. “If she wants you to see, she’ll show you herself.”

Komaru was unsure if it was guilt or revulsion turning her stomach.

Stare still level, Kirigiri extended her hands across the table. She reminded Komaru of an approaching ghost in a summer festival haunted house.

“I apologize. I know this isn’t a pretty sight.” Kirigiri fortunately didn’t appear offended at how she had recoiled, but Komaru still felt bad. “However, I’m afraid this is all I have left of her.”

Trembling, Komaru reached out and took Kirigiri’s hands into her own. The ruined skin felt like the surface of her old plastic desk at her parents’ home—smooth and cool, but with a faint rough texture if she moved her own fingertips over it.

“What was her name?”

“Is that necessary?”

“I knew Touwa Tokuichi’s.”

“…Yu-” Kirigiri’s fingers tensed against Komaru’s palms. “Samidare. Samidare Yui.”

_How did she die?_  Komaru wanted to ask, but Kirigiri’s hands felt so frail in hers that she worried that with too much pressure, they would crumble into ash.

Instead, she mumbled the name over and over, closing her eyes. She hadn’t done anything like this in Touwa Hills, but something terrifyingly painful had washed over Kirigiri’s usually stoic features, and Komaru could no longer bear to look.

She tried to picture what someone named Samidare Yui would have looked like. One of her classmates who had gone missing during the Incident had been named Yui. She’d been petite and plump, her round cheeks dyed in a perpetual blush and framed by shoulder-length hair. She’d sewn pale pink ribbons onto all of her uniforms and brought twenty-yen chocolates to school that she’d pop into her mouth during class. None of the teachers had ever scolded her for bringing in outside food, even when other students complained it wasn’t fair.

With that Yui’s circular face in her mind, Komaru began drawing deep breaths. She cracked an eyelid to check on Kirigiri, but the other girl had closed her own eyes. A pinkish tinge had bloomed on her pale cheeks, not unlike the way the bridge of Fukawa’s nose reddened when Komaru linked their arms.

What had this Samidare Yui person been to Kirigiri? Her grandfather had been located by Hagakure-san already, and according to Naegi, the only person Kirigiri had lost during the incident was her father. Neither her brother nor Fukawa had ever mentioned a classmate of theirs at Kibougamine by the name Samidare Yui, either. From what Komaru knew, Kirigiri’s mother had died of an illness when she was very young, not from an accident, so there was no reason for the burns to be related…

Komaru felt Kirigiri’s fingers twitch. Studying the other girl’s face, she saw that Kirigiri’s jaw was trembling slightly, clamped shut so hard it looked painful. This really wasn’t a joke. Kirigiri Kyouko—heir to a legacy of detectives, the paragon of reason—wanted Komaru to contact this dead person badly enough to believe it was possible.

She must have been hoping hard. Komaru couldn’t let her down now, not after seeing Kirigiri reveal a rare moment of vulnerability. It was just like in  _AnoBaku_ _Vol. III,_  when Yumi-chan had needed Youko-chan to rescue her from despair. It was just like on the deck of the Excalibur, when Komaru herself had needed Fukawa for the same reason.

Komaru squeezed her eyes shut once more and tried to remember which direction chubby Yui’s bangs had been swept.

***

Several minutes passed, but nothing happened.

“Don’t worry, Kirigiri-san, maybe I can try-”

“This isn’t working.”

Komaru deflated like a leaking balloon. “No, it isn’t.”

Kirigiri took back her hands and watched them intently as she put her gloves back on. Normally she went out of her way to avoid looking at the scar tissue, but she needed her hair to obscure her face from Komaru. Besides, her vision had gone blurry enough that she couldn’t see much of anything anyway.

“Kirigiri-san…I’m sorry.” Komaru sounded as if she were on the verge of tears.

“It’s fine,” Kirigiri said, her voice like a rubber band wrapped hundreds of times around a doorknob, “I mostly knew this wouldn’t work.”

“It’s not fine. You were relying on me to contact her and I couldn’t.”

Kirigiri realized that she should comfort her best friend’s sister, but her throat had closed and she was afraid that if she made an attempt to be soothing now, all she would be able to utter would be a choked groan.

She had known that this was the most likely outcome—it had been fear of this precise situation that had prevented her from approaching Komaru sooner. The odds of success were astronomically low, hovering near zero.

Yet, Fukawa of all people had been convinced that Komaru had channeled the ghost of Touwa Tokuichi. And Kirigiri herself knew that sometimes inexplicable events could take place. One’s life could be saved by the final telekinetic burst of a dying former child psychic, for instance.

“Naegi-san,” Kirigiri said, placing a now-gloved hand on Komaru’s forearm. “Please calm down. To be honest, I’m not sure what I would have said even if you had contacted her spirit.”

What would she have said? Sorry? I miss you? You deserved better than what happened to you? Or would she have been so overwhelmed with Yui-oneesama before her for the first time in years that she’d have been rendered speechless?

Perhaps it wasn’t a conversation she was longing for, but just some reassurance that Samidare had existed. Maybe all she wanted was to know that she hadn’t dreamed her up, that their time together had been real and had mattered. Enoshima had proven that memories alone couldn’t be trusted, since they could evaporate without warning like mist in the morning sun.

She supposed she would have to continue to be satisfied with the burns.

At least Komaru appeared to have relaxed somewhat. Despite that, her cheeks were still wet with tears, her face flushed with distress. Every few seconds, a hiccup rattled her frame.

She really did have the same hair trigger emotions as her brother.

“Do me a favor,” Kirigiri said, strength returning to her voice. “Let’s keep this between us, shall we?”

Komaru nodded as the cafeteria door creaked open and banged against the wall.

“There you are! I’ve been searching this entire hovel, looking for you!” Fukawa approached the table, muttering under her breath. When she noticed Komaru’s state, her back straightened in surprise before she lunged forward to pull Komaru into a hug. “What happened? Are you okay?”

Fukawa patted Komaru’s back, then stroked her hair. She shot a glare at Kirigiri over Komaru’s shoulder.

“If you did anything to her, you’re going to have to answer to me.”

“No, no, Touko-chan. It’s okay. I’m okay.” Komaru sniffed and readjusted her head so it was tucked under Fukawa’s chin. Kirigiri watched Fukawa’s face burn deep red as her glasses fogged. “Kirigiri-san just told me a really sad story, that’s all.”

“Yeah well, I warned you not to ask about things like that.” Fukawa smiled gently, in a way Kirigiri had never seen before. “You’re too big of a crybaby to handle it.”

“I guess I am,” Komaru said with a giggle.

A sharp pain pierced Kirigiri’s heart, but it quickly melted into a warmth that spread through her chest and seeped into her limbs. Though it had been years, she recognized the sensation.

_Onee-sama._

“Excuse me,” Kirigiri said, standing. “I need to be going.”

“Oh, but are you gonna be okay?” Komaru’s brow furrowed in concern, while Fukawa rolled her eyes behind her.

“Yes, in fact,” Kirigiri said, offering a small smile. “I think you actually helped more than we initially realized.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Kirigiri left the two girls some privacy in the cafeteria and stepped into the hallway. Where to? At this hour, Togami would be reading in the library, Naegi would be playing Uno with Hagakure, and Asahina would just be finishing up her nightly workout. Her own room was also an option, but at the moment, she didn’t feel like being alone.

Blinking away the last lingering tears, Kirigiri turned and headed toward the women’s locker room.


End file.
